


Now Go the Glitch to Sleep

by tehkittykat



Series: Bedtime Stories [6]
Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Betrayal, Tron: Evolution, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: GFY, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehkittykat/pseuds/tehkittykat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments in the lives of the users and programs who live in a world gone horribly right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tea Time

**Author's Note:**

> I blame everyone on plurk and tumblr. This means you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anon + Small Users

“Thanks again for—oh _man_ ,” Flynn said, and Anon looked up from where he was sitting next to a particularly small User to see his own User trying to cover what was probably a smile. He favored Flynn with a pointed eyebrow raise, wishing he could ping in the User world just to wipe that look off the other’s face, before the little User who had commandeered his attention tugged on his shirt to reclaim it.

“Anon, you’re one of a kind,” Flynn added as he sat down on the floor near the tiny table, watching as AmyKleinburg solemnly put a beribboned hat on Anon’s head and smiled.

“Now you’re done, Uncle Anon! Let’s have tea!”

Flynn surveyed the results of the small User’s work—she’d spent the better part of .12 millicycles fiddling with putting pigments on Anon’s face—and buried his face in his hands, shaking shoulders betraying his laughter.

“Oh man… Uh… Well, thanks for covering me with Roy’s niece, huh? I brought back donuts for teatime,” Flynn said, lips curved in an impossible to stifle grin.


	2. System

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Clu + Tron + System. Tron can't have been the only one driven to drink.

Tron knew it was bad when he found Clu half-flopped over the main console and slowly turning a half-full glass of rather vivid red energy around and around. Displays floated around him, silent wireframes delineating energy flows, bandwidth use, and, more worrying, the script Stats had put together to attempt to predict fault behavior.

The _prototype_ script that had failed to predict the fault in Gamma Sector nine millicycles ago.

“Clu. C’mon. Time to go,” Tron said as he approached, his frown deepening as he took in the dimmed white circuits in Clu’s armor. Taking in refined energy on low reserves… not a good sign.

“Final casualties?” Clu said, not stirring, voice a little slurred. From exhaustion or the energy or both Tron couldn’t tell.

“Not now, Clu,” he said instead, grabbing the back of the thankfully mobile task chair and dragging it back. “Radia can give you the final stats later. You need to rest.”

“Don’ wanna.”

“Too bad. C’mon.” Clu was a damn hard program to shift, and it took a couple tries for Tron to overcome friction—and crash Jalen anyway for teaching Clu how to use physics exploits—and get him sliding back off the table. The Administrator righted himself before he could fall, but it was a near thing, betraying exhaustion-induced lag.

“Tron… Do you think he even gives a bit about us anymore?”

The security program sighed and circled the chair to help haul the drooping admin to his feet.

“Bed. Let’s go.”

There was nothing else to say. Not when Tron didn’t know the answer either.


	3. Culture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Clu, Jalen, Sam, probably Roy and Jet if you want him there having a movie night and arguing over which one to watch first.

“What is the point of this again?” Clu asked from his place flopped on the couch where he was steadfastly hanging on to his book while Sam continued to valiantly attempt to pull it out of his hands. It was a losing battle, even as Sam changed tactics and started shaking the book in addition to pulling on it.   
  
“It’s called a sleepover,” Jet said, and the extravagant eyeroll had to be some kind of Bradley trait because despite the glasses that were almost too big for his face the small User was very good at it. “One of the activities is watching movies and staying up all night!”   
  
“So why do I have to participate too?”   
  
“Because it’s fun!” Jet said, hands on hips. “C’mon we gotta pick something or Uncle Roy will pick and it’ll be boring.”   
  
“You heard of fun haven’t you?” Sam said, and Clu finally conceded and let go of the book, sending Sam sprawling into the nest of cushions, pillows, and blankets that the little Users had collected from all over the house.   
  
“Popcorn’s done!” Jalen said, depositing a rather large bowl of the stuff in Clu’s lap before he vaulted the back of the couch to settle next to him.   
  
“Great! Movie time!” Sam crowed.   
  
“Hurry up! We gotta get something in the VCR before Uncle Roy checks on us!” Jet said, grabbing the small stack of cassettes that he’d produced from the bottom of his bag.    
  
“I’m not allowed to watch any more Stephen King movies,” Sam said with an air of tragedy as he settled next to the other boy to look at the selections.    
  
“Not The Fly,” Clu and Jalen chorused with a shudder.   
  
“What about scifi? I have Alien,” Jet said.   
  
“No way that’s boring,” Sam said with a groan.   
  
“Shows what you know!”   
  
“The monsters weren’t even in half the movie! And the explosions didn’t make any noise!”   
  
“That’s ‘cause in space there’s no air!”   
  
“It’s a movie! It doesn’t have to be real!”   
  
“I have a movie, and it is the perfect movie, and you’re watching it,” Roy said, carrying a bucket full of ice and various sodas. He popped a cassette into the VCR before the little ones could complain and took the recliner, leaving the pillow-pile to the boys.   
  
“Aw, Uncle Roy!” Sam whined as the movie began to start.   
  
“Nope. Culture!” Roy said, grinning as he reached for a handful of popcorn.   
  
“At least there’s video games,” Sam said with a sigh as the film began.    
  
“Just wait,” Roy said, looking satisfied with himself.


	4. Nerdrage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sam calling Clu in complete and utter nerdrage after an episode of Star Trek: TNG.

“And I don’t like Commander what’s-her-name ‘cause she’s mean to Riker! Riker is cool and the Enterprise would suck if he left! The Enterprise is the best ship anyway so I think she’s just jealous!”

Clu sighed, nodding along to Sam’s diatribe while he tried to make up for the lost time by skimming reports.

“Does your father know you’re on the line?” he finally said when Sam paused to take a breath.

“That’s not the important part! Picard  _can’t_  stay a Borg! Why did they have to end on a cliffhanger?! I have to wait  _months_  to see how it ends! That’s  _forever_ , Clu!”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Clu said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. This was  _not_  how he anticipated using the communications channels to the User world when Flynn and Roy modified the I/O towers to better support what Radia had been doing to them.

“Hey, Clu!” Flynn’s voice came on,  _finally_ , cutting across Sam’s continued complaining. Clu was learning more about  _Star Trek_  than he ever  _wanted_  to know. “Sorry about that, he hid in the attic with the phone.”

“Why am I not surprised?” All right, that was fairly funny. Sam seemed to have a talent for hide-and-seek.

“Anyway, why don’t you fill me in on what you think of the WiFi plan while I get Mr. Nerdrage here ready for bed?”


	5. The Morning After the Night Before

“Clu! Jalen! Get up! You’re gonna miss the  _meteors_!  _Guuuuuuys!”_

Clu snapped awake just as Sam launched himself into the bed, still chattering something about the sky falling, and the administrator ended up with a very pointy knee lodged in his side that had probably damaged at least one internal organ for his trouble.

“Time is it?” he managed to slur, already starting to sit up unsteadily when consciousness caught up and he realized three things.

One, it was exactly 3:55 in the morning and so this had better be an _actual incident of the actual sky falling_.

Two, he was still very naked from having earlier taken advantage of the fact that Sam and his friend Jet were supposed to be parked  _outside_  for the night.

Three, the light was on and Sam was staring at him.

“Turn off the  _sun_. Too early,” Jalen whined, snatching at the blanket to pull over his head and winding an arm around Clu’s waist in a futile effort to pull him down. “Go find a User to fix the sky.”

“Did you get bitten by a  _vampire_?” Sam finally burst out.

“A what?”

Sam didn’t answer, merely crawled across the bed— earning a muttered curse and a shove from Jalen, who was peeking out now to observe the chaos— and grabbed Clu’s chin to examine his neck.

“Oh wow I think we do have vampires.”

“What’s a vampire?” Clu asked, nettled, as Sam poked at what was definitely a very tender spot. It was just a sore spot, and there had definitely been no-one else around when he and Jalen had been…  _oh_.

“They’re creatures of the night who suck your blood! Like Dracula. They’re really scary monsters and they can kill people! Don’t worry, they hate garlic and sunlight. We just gotta wait a couple hours and then open all the closets. Wait! Hang on, I’ll find some garlic!” And Sam was off again, yelling for Jet to come help him figure out if there was garlic in the kitchen.

“Creature of the night, huh?” Jalen said, and glitch the ISO anyway since he was grinning in his smug little nest of blanket.


End file.
